Nearly two years ago (wow…), I wrote an article questioning the usefulness and/or helpfulness of the concept of biblical inerrancy.  In this post, I argued that it seems apparent that the doctrine of inerrancy is actually inevitably harmful to a Christian understanding of the place and role of Scripture within theology for it unnaturally weds the doctrine of Scripture to modernistic conceptions of historicity and textual criticism by way of antithesis.  In doing so, I concluded, a theology that affirms the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is qualitatively indistinguishable from that which it seeks to overcome in that by necessarily affirming the starting premises of modernistic notions of historicity, biblical inerrancy unwittingly capitulates the legitimacy of said categories while (illogically) arriving at different conclusions.  In my understanding, such an approach is ultimately doomed because its entire attempt at substantiation will be (and is, consequently, being) washed away with the next great philosophical paradigm shift.

In the two years since writing about my thoughts on this perspective, I have engaged several who are opposed to my view and assert–nearly above all other things–the absolute necessity of the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture.  While I certainly do not wish to call into question More >